Hello fellow railfans.On this site you will find a variety
of photos taken by my brother Bruce Mclean and myself,(Doug Mclean).
My brother has been taking pictures of trains on Cape Breton Island
for a number of years now,and he has an extensive library of photos,
most of the pictures on this site were taken by him.
I have just started construction of this site in Sept.
2004,so expect to see the site expand as I add more photos.Now let's
get to what you came here for.Click on the company name headers for
the Photo's of the trains for that specific company.
Sysco
Sydney Steel is now a part of history for the Island as
it has been closed and is currently being dismantled.Sysco used to supply
a large amount of rail traffic to Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia
Railroad in the form of rails,billots,wire,etc.The plant used yard switchers
of both standard and narrow gauge to move freight around to different
areas of the plant and to the yard.The narrow gauge locos were mostly
used for moving ingots from one area of the plant to another.You'll
notice that the SW1000's? have their cabs cut down to allow them access
to the buildings.
A good portion of these pictures were taken while the
center cabs were being loaded on flatcars for their trip to Detroit.I
will be adding more pictures to this section as time goes by.
Devco
Devco (short for Cape Breton Development Corporation)
was formed to phase out coal mining on Cape Breton.It has taken over
the old Sydney & Louisbourg lines,and operated the coal mines and
the coke ovens for a period of time.The coal mines are now closed and
the Devco railway is now the Sydney Coal Railway which supplies coal
to the power plant.The coal it carries is now shipped in by boat.
Cape Breton & Central Nova
Scotia Railway
The Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway,better
known by it's abbreviated terms CBNS or CB&CNS,was formed in October
1993 when the line was purchased by Railtex from CN.In it's first years
of operation it had an all Alco line up employing 8 C630's & 5 RS-18's,for
a very short period the line had 1 C636 which broke a camshaft on it's
first work order with the line and was retired and scrapped.The alcos
are now retired and most of them were scrapped.CBNS is now made up of
EMD units ranging from GP 9's to SD 45's.
The line runs from Sydney to Truro where it services many
industries.Cargo was mostly made up of coal from Devco and Steel from
Sysco,but these companies have since closed.Currently it is moving coal
from the piers to the power plants in Point Tupper & Trenton,container
cargo to & from the port in North Sydney,miscellaneous traffic from
Truro which is where it makes it's connection to the rest of the world
through CN.
